Saturday, March 26, 2005

Blog posting frequency and other dilemmas

Blog posting frequency is a question, that faces and confounds every blog writer, from time to time.

Occasionally, more often than that!

The problem concerns how often should a blogger post a new entry to a blog.

The answer is more complex than thought at first glance. While it's relatively easy to place a firm number of required weekly posts, for most bloggers, the answer is not so simple.

As a very qualified answer, I would suggest that a blog should receive three posts per week, all appearing on separate days.

Of course, that doesn't solve any of the blogging life dilemmas, as anyone could make that arbitrary distinction. It's almost as much of a non-answer as pointing out that a person should post to a blog as often or as seldom as they choose.

So much for anything concrete or helpful from that incedibly weak response.

Talk about avoiding the question entirely.

Let's try some more solid ground instead.

For example, for most of its existence, I've posted to Blog Business World about once per day. Each daily post has been more of an informational column than a standard shorter blog post. That's the way I like to write. It's definitely not a blogging technique I would recommend to everyone.

Over the past month, I have increased my daily blog posting totals. Instead of one major article, I have written two or even three per day. The idea was to compare traffic from the one posting per day level to several columns appearing each day.

The results have been amazing.

My traffic levels have increased by a very significant amount.

More posts per day has resulted in heavier visitor traffic levels.

Whether that phenomenon is unique to this blog, or is a widespread occurrance, is difficult to say. Without some hard data from other bloggers on the matter, there is really no way of knowing with any certainty.

Perhaps more posts per day works better than once per day.

Maybe. Maybe not.

More research is required on the issue.

Now, back to the number of posts per week.

Before setting a hard and fast posting rule, it's best for each blogger to consider the goal of the blog. If the goal is to share information (like this SEO blog), then more frequent posts should be considered. If the blogging objective is to raise awareness of the business related to the blog, then fewer posts per week will be sufficient.

As I said, there is no surefire answer for all occasions.

I would recoommend that a blogger begin at the three post per week level. Once a posting routine has been established, consider adding a fourth or fifth post per week. It's not a blogging requirement, handed down on stone tablets, that a blogger post every day.

New bloggers should consider taking the weekend off from posting, for example. Many established bloggers, with huge traffic levels, don't write weekend posts.

Remember as well, that you don't have to write all of your posts as they appear. You can write them in advance. Many blog hosts accept pre-written posts, scheduled by their internal clock system, to appear as planned at established times.

The scheduling system is similar to that of various greeting card sites, where you can write out your Thanksgiving cards today, and have them delivered at the calendar date of the holiday.

Alas, the Blogger hosting system has no such advantages.

What Blogger users can do, however, is to write advance posts and store them as drafts. A few clicks on the appointed day, and the post appears on the blog. At least the main writing work has already been completed on a previous day.

As always, blog posting frequency remains an individual choice, with no set in stone rules.

When you think about it, that's yet another advantage of blogging.

Tags: , , , .

No comments:

Post a Comment